That’s a significant expansion of the tablet’s commercial distribution, and one that might temper some of the Surface inventory issues with which Microsoft has been grappling. That’s the hope, anyway. The reseller program was conceived as a means of driving Surface sales into the enterprise, government and education markets by expanding the device’s availability and broadening its appeal with the addition of tech support and data protection services that resellers often provide.

For Microsoft, which has been scrambling to improve Surface’s commercial prospects, improving channel availability like this is a no-brainer, though its timing does seem decidedly after the fact.

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